Sour Cream Cookies: I wouldn't bother if I were you

After so many successes, Mrs. Mary Martensen has let me down.

Sour Cream Cookies ¼ cup butter 1 cup sugar 2 eggs, beaten ½ tsp lemon juice 1 cup sour cream ½ tsp baking soda 3½ cups flour 1 tsp baking powder Heat oven to 400°. Have greased or parchment-lined baking sheets ready. Cream the butter, then thoroughly beat in the sugar. Mix in the eggs, lemon juice, and sour cream. Sift in the remaining dry ingredients. Roll one-fourth inch thick, sprinkle with sugar, and bake ten minutes. Makes sixty cookies. Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933, via The Internet Archive

I always keep sour cream on hand because it's nice in so many things, and my current container was getting close to expiring. And while one can throw out things that are at the end of their prime, aren't cookies better?

Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933

Mrs. Mary Martensen tells us to add the sugar and a couple of other things to the bowl all at once, but I could already tell that would end badly. After all, our small allotment of butter was still clinging to the sides of the bowl in hard clumps. So I instead beat in the sugar until the two were thoroughly mixed before introducing the remaining ingredients.

Ahhhh, clump free!

We are directed to add "eggs, well beaten." I decided that the eggs would be plenty well-beaten after I was done mixing them in.

And so, it was time to add in the sour cream. Bearing in mind the New England raisin drops, I also added some vanilla-- and also some salt because I think they had unsalted butter in 1933.

After mixing in the flour, I began to doubt Mrs. Mary Martensen. (She had already disappointed us with the cabbage au gratin. At the time I charitably decided that no one's perfect.) No one could take a rolling pin to this sticky mess and make it a quarter-inch thick. 

I thought that maybe like Maxine Menster's cookies, you're supposed to refrigerate the dough first. Perhaps an experienced cook would have known that just from reading the recipe and mentally adding up all the ingredients in their head. 

But because I am not that good, I had already preheated the oven and refused to waste the electricity. So I forgot about doing things properly and thoroughly coated the mass of dough in flour to keep it from sticking. After that, I didn't need a rolling pin. I only had to pat it out with my fingers.

I was surprised at how nice and neat these cookies looked. My success felt like cheating fate.

I feared that these would melt into dough puddles, but instead they became adorable little poufs.

I tasted these and was immediately glad I halved the recipe. They're... not good. They have a perfect texture, but they taste like nothing. They're not merely bland. They taste empty. There is no absence of subtle flavor. Instead, there is no flavor. They weren't even sweet- the sugar somehow dissipated along with everything else. The dough had been promising, all the life in the cookies got cooked out.

I guess it's nice that I cleaned out the fridge and avoided the temptation of excessive calories. Really, this recipe confounds me. The texture is perfect, but they're so depressing. These cookies are what Maxine Menster's are glad they ain't.